This article appeared in the October 2007 issue of
The American Spectator, where Mr. Scruton is a monthly
columnist. To subscribe to our monthly print edition, click
here.
THE FIRST PIECE OF MORAL advice that parents used to give their
children was contained in the Golden Rule: Do as you would be done
by. Christian parents backed this up with the parable of the Good
Samaritan, Jewish parents with the commandment to “love thy
neighbor as thyself,” enlightened parents with their own version of
the Categorical Imperative. It all seemed very simple. After all,
what is morality about if it is not about living with others? And
how can you live with others if you don’t treat them as equals?
Two powerful influences have disturbed that old equilibrium. The
first is the gospel of selfishness, preached by Ayn Rand. Don’t
listen to that socialist claptrap, Rand told us. It is just a ploy
of the parasitical, to curtail the freedom of the heroes, and to
seize their goods. Rand’s fiery mixture of free market economics
and Nietzschean defiance proved intoxicating to a generation
struggling to come to terms with the New Deal and the growth of the
welfare state. By announcing “the virtue of selfishness,” she
reminded her readers that creation comes before distribution, and
that creation needs a motive. And what motive will drive people to
take the risks required by wealth creation, unless it be
self-interest?
Amalgamating Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” with Nietzsche’s
condemnation of the “slave morality,” Rand gave to the would-be
entrepreneurs of the mid-20th century the courage to say “get off
my back.” By being selfish, she argued, I enjoy my freedom and
amplify my power — so creating at least one attractive person in
the sea of second-raters. But I also provide work and reward to
others, helping those around me to be selfish, and therefore
successful, in their turn. By being altruistic I merely waste my
energies on useless people; and when the state is altruistic in my
name, seizing my goods and distributing them among its ever-growing
ranks of dependents, then freedom, creativity, and wealth are all
at risk, and futility rules.
Rand was a terrific intellect, in every sense of the word
“terrific.” She fired her ideas like missiles into all the citadels
of opinion, with vivid characters as their advocates and engaging
dramas as their proof. Her novels and essays may not be the highest
literature, but they grab the reader by the throat and defy him to
say so. And when the still small voice speaks up at last,
questioning whether it is exactly selfishness that is needed by a
free economy, or whether there are not other aspects to human life,
other things to strive for, other sources of satisfaction than the
satisfaction of me, the reply comes: of course, that’s
exactly what I am saying! When a father works to provide for his
children; when a woman spends her money on a person she loves; even
when a man lays down his life for his friend — all this is
selfishness, doing what one wants to do, because one has
the motive to do it, because that is what the I
requires. The opposite of selfishness is not disinterested
love, but the kind of slave labor that the state demands, in order
to be “altruistic” with the surplus. An economy based on
selfishness is one in which people also give; an
altruistic economy is one in which they merely steal.
IT IS NOT SURPRISING if, after a heavy dose of Rand, people end up
unsure whether selfishness is a good thing or a bad thing, or
exactly how you must behave in order to pursue it or avoid it.
Things have been made worse by the biological theory of “altruism,”
defined as an act whereby one organism benefits another at a cost
to itself. On this definition the lioness who dies in defense of
her cubs is altruistic. So too is the soldier ant marching by
instinct against the fire encroaching on the ant-heap, or the bat
distributing its booty around the nest. Geneticists have worried
about how to reconcile “altruism” with the theory of the selfish
gene; but the rest of us ought to worry rather more about the use
of this term to run so many disparate phenomena together. Is it
really the case that the officer who throws himself onto a live
grenade in defense of his men is obeying the same biological
imperative as the soldier ant who marches to his death in the fire?
And if so, is there anything really praiseworthy about the
officer’s action?
Taken together, the Randian encomium of selfishness and the
biologist’s debunking of altruism seem to undermine those old
maxims whereby our parents brought us up. The moral motive is made
to look either mistaken or trivial: either something to avoid,
since it impedes our creativity, or something unavoidable, since it
is implanted in our genes, just as it is implanted in the genes of
the bear, the buzzard, and the beetle. The idea that the moral
motive is something to be acquired, by learning the habit
of self-sacrifice, seems to have no place in modern thinking, and
it is not surprising, therefore, if the moral motive has so little
place in modern life.
Not that our parents were entirely blameless in this matter. My
own father was none too clear about the distinction between caring
for others and caring for yourself. When I protested that I was
doing my duty in walking the dog, and therefore could be excused
from the washing up, he retorted, “But you enjoy walking the dog;
so that doesn’t count!” Like many a person brought up in the grim
routines of Northern Protestantism, he believed that no action
could be truly dutiful if you didn’t approach it with gritted
teeth, and that pleasure was a sign of selfishness. His socialist
opinions came from the same source: not a desire for justice, but a
resentment of success. My father was one of those people — and
British society is as full of them now as it was full of them then
— who make Ayn Rand look plausible. And maybe it was because I
early rebelled against his outlook that I have never been persuaded
by Rand.
IS IT NOT OBVIOUS, from Christ’s description, that the Good
Samaritan enjoyed helping the man who fell among thieves, that he
went out of his way, from an abundance of good will and from the
sheer pleasure of giving, to set the man on his feet? And is it not
probable that the priest and the Levite felt no pleasure at all
when they passed on the other side, and maybe that they did so with
a cringe of self-loathing? Learning to love your neighbor as
yourself is learning to take pleasure in the things that please
him, as a mother takes pleasure in the pleasures of her child. To
call this “selfishness” is to abuse the language. A selfish act is
one directed at the self; an unselfish act is one directed at
others. And the truly unselfish person is the one who
wants to perform unselfish acts, who takes
pleasure in giving, and who enjoys the prospect of
another’s success. This is not, as Rand would have us believe, just
another form of selfishness. It is an altogether higher motive, one
in which the other has replaced the self as the object of
concern.
Moreover, it is a motive of which animals know nothing. The ant
and the bee may obey the genetic imperative that sends them to
their death against the intruder: but they have no idea of doing
this for the sake of the heap or the hive. Not even the lioness,
who fights to the death for her cubs, has any knowledge that it is
for their sake that she does this, or that she is making
them a gift of her life. The little word “sake” is one of those
words — like “the” and “that” — to which a whole book of
philosophy could be devoted. Indeed, whole books of philosophy
are devoted to this word, since that is what moral
philosophy is about-acting not just for a purpose, but for the sake
of something, be it honor, duty, or another person. No animal has
the concept expressed by this word, or the motive explained by it,
and to describe animals as altruistic is to place an immovable
obstacle in the way of understanding their behavior.
Unlike the officer who throws himself on the grenade, the
lioness defending her cubs is not tempted to save herself. She is
obeying a species need that we admire because we share it, but
which we also pass beyond into another state of mind of which the
lioness knows nothing. To act for the sake of others, when
temptation pulls in another direction, is to obey an imperative
that goes beyond every species emotion. It is to make a gift of
oneself, of one’s interests, and at the limit of one’s life, and
the words of the Gospel-that “greater love hath no man than this,
that he should lay down his life for his friend” — describe what
is really at stake in the moral life, namely self-sacrifice.
Europeans, who are snobbish about American culture, are also
shamed by American altruism. Once they have made their fortune,
Americans devote themselves to giving it away. They lavish gifts on
their school, their church, their college, or their hospital,
taking an obvious pleasure in doing so. They also take pleasure in
others’ success — an emotion that seems to have vanished entirely
from European society. Of course, Europeans are great preachers of
altruism. But the more they preach, the less they give. For they do
not regard others as their personal concern: It is the state, not
the individual, that has assumed the duty of charity, and when
things go wrong — as in the recent floods in England — it is the
state that must step in to help.
The core idea of morality, the idea contained in that little
word “sake,” is rapidly vanishing from the European consciousness.
The public square is full of moralizing language about hunting,
smoking, drinking, and other forms of enjoyment. But when you ask
for whose sake this or that is demanded, the answer is always:
yourself. The old training in “sakehood,” which our parents
regarded as the first step in moral education, simply does not
occur. We should not be surprised, therefore, to discover that
European cities are full of disoriented teenagers who think of the
laws of morality as rules of longterm self-interest, and who seem
unable to imagine what it would be, to do something for any other
sake than their own.
